On Beauty

I’m currently taking a creative nonfiction course and it’s been the most eye-opening and philosophical English course I’ve taken thus far-and I wouldn’t be stretching to say that it is truly my favorite course out of 3+ years of college. We’ve been discussing the point of defining the genre and why people should care about what we write. The only reason I can come up with for the former is that people should define a writing genre in a manner that will allow them to be most inspiring to others while allowing them to demonstrate the beauty of written language. If you want to use the term creative nonfiction, use your pen as a creative blossom that will fill the air with the fragrance of your stories. If you choose to use the term narrative nonfiction, write stories that fill your readers lives with a sense of what humanity really is through our eyes. For the latter, I revisit authors because they speak to me in a way in which I wish I could speak to myself or others. I read their work to be influenced to no longer be afraid of what I don’t know or don’t know how to feel. I read them to forget about who I think I am or potentially may one day be. I love to be inspired in a way that makes one breath taste different than the previous. I’ve been listening to a lot of music and looking at bunches of art as of late because of these sudden lights of musings. I have been so wrapped up in various things hat I had forgotten the simple inspiring beauty that I find in life.  

Jeremy Larson has been singing his sweet, melancholic tones in my ear on repeat for the past three days without cease, and I feel more alive than I ever had. His music reminds me of a more complex time, but one that I truly cherished. It was a time of realization and a few tears, but it was one of the times in my life I could truly say that I felt alive. I’ve been a tremendous fan of his for quite awhile, but each time I listen to his music I learn something new about myself and the way that I view the world.

The first of his songs to entrance me completely was When Morning Comes. Melissa and I stumbled upon his music when it was used in Brandon Goodwin’s amazing film My Boss is an Idiot, and I have been under its spell ever since. I was listening to that song yesterday as I laid in the grass outside of Pummill Hall awaiting the beginning of my English class as the autumn breeze ran its fingers through my hair and the summer sun awakened my fading freckles. The lawn was cool and fragrant and my senses were heightened, but I felt as though I was watching life before me on a television screen. For those four minutes and thirty-eight seconds, the world didn’t exist outside of my line of vision; no words could substitute the sweet lyrics filling my head; I didn’t want life to exist in any other way for me at that particular moment. For that moment I was sad, happy, tense, relaxed, frozen and febrile. It was perfect. 

I was looking at Jeremy’s website his evening and I stumbled to a site with someone’s personal artistic photography-each picture with numerous comments attached to the hind-end. As I flipped though the pictures, I couldn’t help but get mildly angry with the lack of depth of the comments that people had left. The pictures included original artwork and also photos of the artist. It was all breathtaking yet the alleged peers of the artist could do nothing more than leave shallow comments or smiley faces in commendation of the pictures. It felt as though they thought the artist would rather receive a bull shit comment so he/she knew that they had labored through the pictures than actually appreciating them for the meaning that they may potentially bring to the artist or anyone else and giving insight that might bring artistic feedback. 

These feelings immediately brought me back to an aesthetics class I took a couple of years ago. Most of the class was based upon what constitutes art and how it should be interpreted. I can’t say I’m a critic-nor am I critical of many art forms, picky in my personal taste, but not really critical-but I think that people need to start making better judgement calls while interpreting art of the caliber of this particular artist-as should we all when we walk around and make judgments about anything. We should ask ourselves “where is the place for this ‘piece’? “Should I shallowly analyze it like another one of Seth Rogen’s movies or should I realize that this is a part of someone’s personality, experience, being, and personal philosophy and possibly not just an inspiration they had while getting high and perhaps leave a more meaningful message than ‘I like the one on the left’?” 

I’m not saying I’m the deepest well in the literary flow of artistic judgement, but as I see my artist’s, Jeremy’s (and Brandon’s) work, I think that it deserves to be seen as a piece of someone that they allowed us to see, use and inhale as our own. It should be admired for the weight that it holds in our lives and not for it’s ability to draw our attention to the left.